Yesterday I gave you a little history about Washington Dulles International Airport, so you could see why modernization is so important. Modernizing an airport is extremely hard, but this new plan announced by President Trump makes it sound easy. It’s a bad plan that’s going to cost far more than they say, and it’s not going to get done as proposed, if it gets done at all.
If you want to see pretty pictures of what this might look like, go to any other media source that covered this. I’m not going to bother showing you any of that, because it’s never going to look like this. Just know that the plan as announced includes $22.5 billion for:
- the largest parking garage in the world with 32,000 spots (the current number one is West Edmonton Mall at 20,000)
- a massive new headhouse to sit behind the Saarinen structure which will have security, customs, and gates that will now expand above ground to a rebuilt Concourse A/B
- the old Temporary Midfield Concourse C/D will be rebuilt without any train stops, presumably as a narrow regional concourse but it’s not entirely clear
- The new Concourse E will be fully built out to go the entire width of the current terminal area
- Another new concourse will be built even further south, going the full width as well
- The AeroTrain will be finished, going in a circle all the way past the farthest concourse
I know, you might be having trouble visualizing this, so let me help.
Does this look like Atlanta’s original design? Yes, except for that first concourse being connected above ground. Oh, and the train will be twice as expensive since it goes in a circle instead of a spine. And oh yeah, Atlanta carried 105 million passengers in 2025 while Dulles had a mere 29 million.
There is this sense of grandeur that does not fit the needs of this airport, and probably never will. This is being built for enormous passenger growth beyond anything realistically needed in the forseeable future. Don’t even get me started on the absurdity of a 32,000 space garage. SeaTac, by the way, is currently the largest in the US with 13,000 spaces. This seems to follow President Trump’s belief that bigger is always better.
The problem with bigger is that it costs a lot of money to build. So airports usually put together their master plans and then phase these projects in over many, many years. In the press conference, President Trump said that the original plan was to build this over 60 years. That isn’t the plan. President Trump explained:
…we’re doing it all at one time; it’ll all be completed and it’ll be beautiful and it’ll be something very special.
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said they will start construction in the spring, and they are going to “move at the speed of President Trump.” I’m going to assume they don’t mean clocking his best mile time and that he means fast.
The press release does say this will be done in phases, which I suppose fits with the proclamation that this won’t impact any flights. But there may not be any flights left anyway if they actually build this thing.
I know you’re probably thinking. Maybe he’ll just raise money from somewhere else for this, right? That is not the plan. Jack Potter, CEO of Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) that runs Dulles said:
So, this is not requiring federal dollars; this is going to be airport generated dollars, airline contributions, which is phenomenal. It means that we’re off to a fast start here.
Despite United CEO Scott Kirby trying not to look too disturbed in the background, there is no world where he wants to pay to operate at this kind of palace. I’m sure he’s using this as a way to get some of the work done that he thinks is most important, and then he figures when a new president is in place, the rest can be shelved.
Without Congress deciding to pour a bunch of money in, airports in the US have a funding problem. Passenger Facility Charges are capped at $4.50 and have been for years, so that means airports need to raise most of their funding for massive projects either through bonds or, increasingly, public-private partnerships (P3). Either way, the money has to eventually hit the airline rate base, so expensive projects can make it expensive for airlines… and that’s not good for air service.
In 2024, Dulles had a cost per enplanement (CPE) of $12.88 which is actually a couple dollars less because there is money from both Dulles and Washington/National that goes into a pot which can be used at either airport. That is its own issue, but now let’s think about how this is going to be funded.
The idea that this will only cost $22.5 billion is silly. Let’s just make it $30 billion to round up and assume massive overruns, not an unfair assumption in any way, especially for a project that will take a very long time. They will use municipal bonds, they say, which does have lower rates than private financing, but I don’t care what you use. When you’re financing $30 billion and you only have 14 million enplanements, this is going to be expensive.
Gary at View From the Wing says that an airline briefing in May put the CPE at $90.64. That would undoubtedly be low since that has to assume we’re “only” talking about $22 billion here instead of what will inevitably be a much higher number.
They say you don’t build the church for Easter Sunday, but in this case it seems like they’re going one step further and building the church for Easter Sunday in the Vatican. As a master plan, this isn’t a problem, but trying to accelerate the plan to get built in a short period of time makes no sense and could end up hurting the airport’s ability to attract flights with sky high costs.
